Fiber Models

A fiber model is a model that uses straight or curved fibers, either finite in length or infinitely long, to represent the solid phase in a porous material or a reinforcement component in a composite material. Fiber models are the appropriate choice for modeling fibrous media, woven or nonwoven, typically synthetic but occasionally also natural ones. Typical examples include the representation of membranes and porous media for fuel cells (Mathias et al. 2003), filters for the separation or sieving of particulate matter, or filters for the exclusion of bubbles in diverse applications of microfluidics. There is a recent rapid growth of interest in the utilization of fiber models for the description of the structure of gas diffusion layers in fuel cells but also of modern textiles and fabrics for specialized applications (Thiedmann et al. 2009; Gaiselmann et al. 2012). The typical features that characterize a fiber model include the diameter and length of the fiber, the number or length...